Friday, 24 September 2010

The Bulgarian Minister for the Diaspora, Bozhidar Dimitrov, has announced that up to half a million Bessarabians are expected to take advantage of a change in the law to give them Bulgarian citizenship.

Over 17,000 ethnic Bulgarians living in Moldova and Ukraine have already been given Bulgarian passports, allowing them to live and work anywhere in the European Empire. An additional 300,000 ethnic Hungarians living in Serbia will be allowed to apply for Hungarian passports in 2011 and Romania has been handing out passports to Moldovans.

This wouldn't be a problem, of course, if the recipients of these new passports stayed in the country that had so generously granted them but of course they don't. They make their way to the richer western European countries where they have the right, as EU citizens, to live and work, to claim benefits and to receive any services the "natives" are entitled to. It doesn't matter that we don't have enough houses or jobs to meet the demands of people already living here, every one of the estimated 5m new EU citizens will have the right from the day they get their passport has been given the right by a foreign government we have no control over to live and work here.

The way things are going, they'll be giving away EU passports for 4 Weetabix tokens and a £5 postal order.